KEISSER: BCS officials experts at misdirection

Tonight's Notre Dame-Alabama BCS championship game should be a good one. Forgive our West Coast hearts for wishing Oregon was in the game rather than the Crimson Tide, but we've grown accustomed to being disappointed by the BCS.

The good news is this is the penultimate BCS title game. The BCS will be no more after the 2013 season and replaced by a four-team playoff starting in 2014.

The bad news is the new playoff system is just a different kind of collegiate con game.

It was lamentable that college fans didn't stand up to the BCS and its forebears when all of this "championship" nonsense began in 1992. Critics here and elsewhere noted the system has had more flaws than maps on the iPhone 5. But a large portion of Americans ignore simple facts - like a presidential candidate having made a fortune as CEO of a company that exported American jobs and bankrupted American companies. We don't pay enough attention to simple details.

The BCS never would have switched to a playoff if it had found a way to keep the system in its intended format: without the Boise States of the world ramming their way into the picture. The timing was perfect, too, to adopt a playoff system that would double the TV revenue of the old system.

The "playoff system" transitions the current BCS format from five major bowl games to seven, with two of those bowls hosting semifinalists and then a national title game.

There will be no automatic bids for any conference to the playoffs.

A selection committee will choose the four schools.

It chucks the non-automatic qualifier concept that got the Boise States into major bowls. The best team from the conferences outside of the Big Five (SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12) will get a single spot and the selection committee can place said team wherever it wants.

That means 11 of the 12 bids to the six bowls, which includes the four semifinalists, presumably will be from those five conferences or Notre Dame.

It ends the limitations on the number of teams from a conference that can go to one of the major bowls. The BCS system limited conferences to two bids, which has had SEC boxers in a bunch for years. In 2011 and 2012, four of the top nine teams in the BCS rankings were from the SEC. Three made the top echelon in five other seasons.

This is the way the original "championship" structure was designed. The "Bowl Coalition" of 1992-94 and "Bowl Alliance" of 1995-97 was made up of all conferences except the Big Ten and Pac-12.

The Big Ten and Pac-12 joined the fold, and from 1998 to 2003 the BCS system featured six major conferences and four major bowls. There wasn't a single bid to a team outside of the power conferences.

Then the automatic qualifier rule was adopted to squelch lawsuits, and 11-0 Utah got a bid to the 2005 Fiesta Bowl; 12-0 Boise State to the 2007 Fiesta; 12-0 Hawaii to the 2008 Sugar; 12-0 Utah to the Sugar in 2009; 13-0 TCU and 13-0 Boise State to the 2010 Fiesta; 12-0 TCU to the 2011 Rose; and 12-1 Northern Illinois to the 2013 Orange.

That's eight shares of BCS money that went to other conferences.

This was no longer tolerable. These interlopers never got to a title game. In 2009, the BCS showed its disdain by putting No. 4 TCU and No. 6 Boise State in the same bowl game despite the fact they were unbeaten and wanted to face a power conference opponent.

Take it on faith, too, that the BCS conferences and bowls had grown weary of the Big East, which lost its lead dog when Miami fled to the ACC and has had a succession of recently added one-time outsiders - Louisville, Cincinnati, Connecticut - earn conference titles and automatic bids.

Cincinnati and Connecticut are on the outside looking in with the Big East eroding like the New Jersey shoreline post-Sandy. Louisville was adopted by the ACC, but for its basketball program and not its football program.

In the new system the Rose, Orange and Sugar bowls will be part of the rotation for semifinal games. In those years when they don't host a semifinal or lose a team to a semifinal, they'll maintain their traditional ties and pick teams from their associated conferences - Pac-12 vs. Big Ten in the Rose, SEC vs. Big 12 in the Sugar (the Big 12 just signed a deal for this) and ACC vs. a SEC team, Big 10 team or Notre Dame.

Three other bowls - the Fiesta, Cotton and one to be named, most likely the one played in Atlanta (Chick-Fil-A) - also will be included in the semifinal rotation. Some may even sign deals with major conferences for a second-place team.

The Boises of the world never will darken the Rose, Orange or Sugar again unless they happen to make the playoff field, which will happen as soon as the moon rover Curiosity finds a used Coke can on Mars.

It's class discrimination, 65 teams having a shot at 11 major bowl bids and the other 55 or so Division I teams having a shot at one.

Oh, there also will be a "presidential oversight committee" to monitor the new system and make sure it runs correctly. I have to believe the major bowl reps, the big conference executive directors and college presidents all have a good laugh every time someone mentions the POC.

Under the guise of a playoff, the BCS schools have found a way to ensure their self-interests. Next time someone says educational institutions are held to a higher moral standard, remind them they play political football as well as Congress.